y? It has
never been proved that the land could not be cultivated there, as it is
here, by hired servants. It is said, that it could not be cultivated
with quite the same conveniency and cheapness, as by the labour of
slaves; by which means, a pound of sugar, which the planter now sells
for sixpence, could not be afforded under sixpence-halfpenny--and this
is the necessity!

"The great revolution which has taken place in the western world, may,
probably, conduce (and who knows but that it was designed) to accelerate
the fall of this abominable tyranny: and now that this contest and the
passions which attend it are no more, there may succeed, perhaps, a
season for reflecting, whether a legislature, which had so long lent its
assistance to the support of an institution replete with human misery,
was fit to be trusted with an empire, the most extensive that ever
obtained in any age or quarter of the world."

The publication of these sentiments may be supposed to have produced an
extensive effect. For _The Moral Philosophy_ was adopted early by some
of the colleges in our universities into the system of their education.
It soon found its way also into most of the private libraries of the
kingdom; and it was, besides, generally read and approved. Dr. Paley,
therefore, must be considered, as having been a considerable coadjutor
in interesting the mind of the public in favour of the oppressed
Africans.

In the year 1783, we find Mr. Sharp coming again into notice. We find
him at this time taking a part in a cause, the knowledge of which, in
proportion as it was disseminated, produced an earnest desire among all
disinterested persons for the abolition of the Slave Trade.

In this year, certain underwriters desired to be heard against Gregson
and others of Liverpool, in the case of the ship Zong, Captain
Collingwood, alleging that the captain and officers of the said vessel
threw overboard one hundred and thirty-two slaves alive into the seas in
order to defraud them, by claiming the value of the said slaves, as if
they had been lost in a natural way. In the course of the trial which
afterwards came on, it appeared, that the slaves on board the Zong were
very sickly; that sixty of them had already died; and several were ill
and likely to die, when the captain proposed to James Kelsall, the mate,
and others, to throw several of them overboard, stating, "that if they
died a natural death, the loss would fall upon the owners of